Add to this the fact that votes can be withdrawn within a grace period, and it's possible for me to do this:

See a 'bad' answer with a score of zero

Downvote it

Refresh the page

Vote to delete it

Withdraw my downvote

Thus achieving what it would seem the privilege is specifically not granting me, namely the ability to cast delete votes on zero-scoring answers. After the above actions, the answer has a score of zero, but does still have my vote-to-delete on it (downvoting again and refreshing shows delete(1)).

1 Answer
1

There's no point to that. Once the deletion goes through, all the rep lost from downvoting the question will be restored.

Even worse, by un-downvoting the question, you're making it hard for others to vote to delete as well. Since you obviously want the question gone, this is rather counterproductive, yes?

Yeah, you can "exploit" this. But not to any worthwhile end.

Oh, and let's not forget: you have to have 20K rep to vote to delete. If you honestly still care about that -1 (especially since it's temporary), well that's a deep, personal issue about which there's nothing we can (or should) do.